Recommended Games

See nano quadcopter robots swarm (video)

In the future, a swarm of flying robots may do the work now done by human search teams.

A robotics research team at the University of Pennsylvania has designed a
system to coordinate a number of small quadcopters, a step toward
coordinating multiple robots for tasks such as surveillance or searching
areas after a disaster.

The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception (GRASP) lab at UPenn yesterday posted a video on You Tube with nano quadcopters showing remarkable agility and the ability to perform as a team.

Related stories

The quadcopters are able to flip over and maintain flight. More amazing
(unnerving?) is their operation in formation. Based on commands, 16
quadcopters change direction, land, navigate past obstacles, and even
fly in a figure-eight formation.

Coordinating the action of multiple robots is one of the big technical
challenges in robotics research now. Small robots, such as these nano
quadcopters, could be well-suited for certain missions, but people need
methods for programming small, inexpensive robots in large groups rather than manually configuring each one.